When you're in a traffic jam, you guess there's a crash or an obstacle ahead. But then traffic starts moving normally again, you see no crash, and you may be a little annoyed as you think, "wait, so nothing caused this delay??"
There's a term for it: phantom traffic jam. It's caused by one car slowing for any reason, resulting in everyone behind him/her having to slow down even more, then speed up to catch the traffic again, etc., etc., resulting in a wave of slow downs. Call them jamitons.
The maker of this video says the solution to jams is for every driver to keep an equal distance from the cars in front and behind. But can we drivers actually do that? Not really. So the ultimate solution suggested is . . NO humans driving!
And that means autonomous cars, or self-driving cars. Tomorrow I'll post evidence that may answer the question, "can self-driving cars help with traffic jams?"
(cont'd tomorrow)
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